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Gear oil

To: mgs@autox.team.net
Subject: Gear oil
From: Mark J Bradakis <mjb>
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 01:13:34 -0600
While cleaning up the digest into manageable chunks and get it flowing again,
I noticed some questins about gear oil.  Some stuff that works well in the
older Brit gearboxes, well, lots of gearboxes, actually, is Redline synthetic
gear lubes.  Of course, donning my Fat Chance Garage hat here, I just happen
to have a few 1 gallon jugs of MT-90 on hand, $30 plus shipping.  I should
have quarts in stock sometime next month.

Anyway, the Redline lubes are synchro friendly, as they do not use sulpher
as an additive.  The acids formed from the breakdown of the sulfer under heat
and load can damage yellow metal (synchros, thrust washer facings, etc.) in
gearboxes.  They also have friction modifiers to make sure that the oil isn't
too slippery.  Too little friction causes the synchro rings to not engage
smoothly.

The MTL and MT-90 gearbox oils are not as well suited to diffs, as the angle
of the pinion and ring gear interface creates a lot of sliding motion between
the gear faces which is not present in transmissions, and requires different
shear characteristics of the lubricant, a GL-5 spec instead of the GL-4 spec
of the MT oils.  Redline does make gear oils for diffs, though I use either
Castrol Hypoy or some Chevron lube available only in 5 gallon buckets.

If anyone wants a copy of the Redline tech notes on gear oils, or needs a
gallon of MT-90, let me know, mjb@autox.team.net.  Off with the salesman
hat, back to list janitor.

mjb.

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